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HE HEALING TOUCH 



A SERMON 



BY KRKDKRICK HO\VARE) WINKS, 

Assistant Director of the Twelfth U. S. Census, 

Formerly Secretary to the Illinois State Commissioners of 

Public Charities, etc., etc. 



BEFORE THE 

Twenty-Seventh National Conference of Charities 

and Correction, at Topeka, Kansas, 

May 2oth, 1900. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 
1900. 






The Healing Touch. 



Matt, viii : 3. — And he put forth his hand and touched him. 



The two hardest tasks that a mancanset himself are : To be good, 
and to do good. To be good involves victory over self, but to do 
good is to triumph over an opposing world. What so-called 
charity worker not a novice will hesitate to confess that his suc- 
cesses have been few and partial in comparison with the multitude 
and magnitude of his failures ? 

Of the reasons why this should be so, many inhere in the con- 
stitution of human society and in the nature of the material with 
which we have to deal ; but it is not of these that I propose to 
speak to-day. Rather let me emphasize the thought that the 
difficulty lies in part at least with ourselves, and that it ma^^ be 
due to the disproportionate importance which we attach to 
methods of work, in contradistinction to the altruistic spirit which 
alone imparts to all benevolent work its vitality and its power. 

Every man needs — may I not say that every man has — an ideal, 
which shapes his life and is the hidden spring of his activities. 
It may be predominantly selfish or unselfish, noble or base, prac- 
tical or visionary ; but those who know him best can divine his 
ideals by studying his career. 

It is to me a mystery wh^^ any man should imagine that there ^ 
is an essential antagonism between the ideal and the actual, or 
between the ideal and the practical. There are of course imprac- 
ticable ideals. But the ideal is to the practical what the soul is to 
the body ; what thought is to speech ; what the plan of a house 
is to the house itself ; what the germ concealed in the acorn is to 
the giant oak, the hero of a thousand storms. The ideal precedes 
the actual, it underlies it, it explains it. The idealist is a creator ; 
the actual is his handiwork. To be able to apprehend the invis- 
ible is the glory of the artist, the inventor, the poet, the prophet. 



2 THE HEALING TOUCH, 

Jesus Christ was an idealist. The exhibition of his ideals to a 
sordid world won for him the crown of martyrdom ; but such was 
tlieir spiritual truth and beauty, that the grave could not hold 
him. 

The Christian ideal, the highest form of the universal religious 
ideal, is the theme of my message upon this occasion. With all 
my heart I rejoice in the opportunity to utter it, as perhaps the 
final outcome of a lifetime spent in the effort to uplift humanit}', 
in association with the men and women whom I see before me 
and with man}^ others imbued with similar convictions and senti- 
ments ; yet I dread the responsibility of failure to speak it rightly. 
If any one will receive it, it will 

* * "^ teach him to attain 

By shadowing forth the Unattainable, 

And step by step to scale that mighty stair 

Whose landing place is wrapt about with clouds 

Of glory of heaven. 

You will observe that in the healing of the leper the putting 
forth of the Saviour's hand was merely a symbolic action. To 
suppose that the healing power lay in the touch savors of super- 
stition, and is as absurd as it w^ould be to think that the powder that 
produces the electric light resides not in the dynamo but in a 
rubber button. The deep significance of the gesture may never- 
theless be inferred from the frequency of its repetition in the 
ministration of Our Lord. Jesus took Peter's wife's mother by 
the hand, and her fever left her. He touched the eyes of 
two blind men sitting by the wayside, and immediately they 
received their sight. He touched the tongue of the deaf-mute of 
Decapolis, and straightway his ears were opened, the string of his 
tongue was loosed, and he spake plainly. On his way to the 
judgment seat of Caiaphas he touched the ear of the high priest's 
servant, when it had been smitten off by the sword of an over- 
zealous disciple, and the wound was healed. In each instance a 
word would have sufficed, but to the word the touch was -added. 
Why was this ? The answer to this question is the leSvSon of 
the hour. 

Science can not supply the answer. Science is the noblest of 
all God's handmaidens save two. She is the serv^ant of truth ; 
obedient to truth not because of purchase or conquest, but by her 

By traAsfer 
i: 'Oh 



THE HEALING TOUCH, 3 

own free gift ; loyal to truth in the spirit not of a slave but of a 
child. Science seeks for truth as for hid treasure, in the depths 
of the earth and sea, in the sky with its trailing splendors, in the 
distant stars ; she would fearlessly enter hell itself and bring 
truth thence, could she but find the way. Science has torn the 
veil from Nature's face. She has annihilated distance, has 
girdled the earth with light and sound as with a [garment, has 
filled it with conveniences and comforts, has made it habitable. 
She has given unity to the world and its inhabitants, has multi- 
plied human wealth a hundredfold, and prolonged the average 
duration of human life. Without the discoveries and inventions 
of science, modern civilization could not have emerged from the 
womb of time. Great as these achievements are, they pale into 
insignificance in comparison with the service that she has rendered 
to mankind in promoting the emancipation of the human intellect 
from chains of superstition, from the tyranny of priestcraft and 
kingcraft. 

But Science is not Art; neither is she Religion. I mean no 
disparagement to the intellectual acumen and moral integrity of 
her devotees, when I say that, despite her rank and power. Sci- 
ence has her limitations. She beholds the universe with the nat- 
ural eye, not with the eye of faith. She has not the spiritual 
insight of the poet, nor the profound mental grasp of the philoso- 
pher. She turns her back upon the unseen, in order that she may 
concentrate her gaze upon the visible and the tangible. She 
touches life on its material, not on its immaterial side. She is 
more masculine than feminine, more earthly than heavenly, more 
human than divine. 

From this point of view the phrase ' ' scientific charity ' ' does not 
appeal to me so strongly as to some of you. The adjective in this 
phrase seems to belittle the meaning of the noun, and to detract 
from its beauty and force. It suggests an effort to shrink the 
diameter of the sun's orbit to that of one of the planets. 

For the limitations of science there are two correctives: imagi- 
nation and sentiment. Without the aid of imagination, Science 
could not have attained her boldest flights. She must create 
hypotheses, unproved and unprovable. She must take some 
things for granted. She must guess, where she does not know, 
and wait to see whether later observations will confirm or over- 



4 THE HEALING TOUCH 

throw her hypothetic assumptions. The greatest names in the 
history of scientific thought are those of men who have dared to 
speculate about origins and tendencies, about the infinite and 
unattainable past and the infinite and mysterious future. They 
have imagined, not demonstrated, their broadest generaliza- 
tions. But while Science tolerates imagination, she is disposed 
to scorn sentiment ; not knowing, apparently, that there is a 
logic not of the intellect but of the heart, whose laws no man 
has attempted to formulate, and perhaps only a woman is 
capable of divining them, yet whose normal processes lead as 
surely to truth as the slower, clumsier process of reason. Con- 
tempt for intuition is her fundamental error, the weakness of her 
controversial position and attitude. 

To understand what Jesus meant, when he touched the leper, 
we need to invoke the aid of imagination and sentiment, the two 
wings of the soul, without whose sustaining power the soul can 
neither mount out of sight like the lark, nor poise as if afloat in 
mid-ether like the eagle. ' ' He put forth his hand and touched 
him. ' ' This is not a scientific fact. Its truth can not be subjected 
to any scientific test. It suggests no scientific generalization. 
Yet the action in its relation to the result is so luminous with 
suggestion, that one must be spiritually blind not to feel it. 

The thought of which the Divine Healer's touch was the expres- 
sion, is the power of love as the supreme remedy for sin and human 
wretchedness. The ideal of Jesus was love ; love in the heart of 
God for men as his children, love on the part of men for God 
as their Father, and mutual love and good will between men as 
brethren. The actual world, as he saw it, was the world which 
we see; but he saw in imagination a new heaven and a new earth, 
an ideal world, a world of love, of perfect love, and therefore a 
world in which righteousness should be the rule of life and not 
its exception. He looked upon the struggle for existence, in 
which the strongest survive; for the living organisms, vegetable 
and animal, which we have learned to call ''fit," are merely such 
as are relatively stronger, because of their adaptation to their 
environment, than others with which they come into competition ; 
and he saw that the application of this natural law to mankind 
is the source of discord and strife abhorrent to his gentle nature 
and shocking to the spiritual sense. He therefore proclaimed the 



THE HEALING TOUCH. 5 

higher law of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. The observ- 
ance of the higher law can alone restore the lost harmony of 
Paradise. ' ' Resist not evil. ' ' '' Put up the sword. '' '' Let the 
tares grow with the wheat.'' ** Forgive, until seventy times 
seven.'' '' Love your enemies." Strife is the result of individ- 
ualism, self-assertion, self-seeking; of the exaltation of the indi- 
vidual above the mass. The antidote to strife is the sense of the 
solidarity of the human race, and of the mutual interdependence 
of its units; of the obligation of the individual to the social 
whole, and especially of the obligation resting upon the strong 
to bear the burdens of the weak. I say that this was Christ's 
ideal. But it was more than that. It was the rule of his own 
life. The picture drawn for us in the gospels is that of a God 
descending to earth from heaven, that he might in human flesh 
take upon himself the load of human agony, and, by dying, 
expiate the sin of the world. No created or uncreated intelli- 
gence could conceive a loftier ideal of self-sacrifice ; and this con- 
ception, wrought into human consciousness, has touched the 
hearts of men and affected the course of history. 

When we look backward, and endeavor to trace the evolution 
of our modern civilization, we discover two parallel lines of move- 
ment. The march of events has been characterized on the one 
hand by the advance of intelligence, producing results whose 
material aspects possib.y strike the imagination with greater force, 
but they are really of less value to the race than the gradual sub- 
stitution of the principle of self-control for that of submission to 
extraneous authority, thus preparing the way for a larger measure 
of civil and religious liberty. On the other hand, the growth of 
intelligence and its more general diffusion have been attended by a 
corresponding diminution of brutality. No doubt this is partially 
explainable on the theory of the subjection of the animal to the 
intellectual nature in man, and the substitution of the appeal 
to reason for the appeal to fear. But it means also that the intel- 
lectual element in human thought is coming more and more into 
right relation with human affection, that there^has been a normal 
development of the sentiments which do honor to human nature — 
justice, sympathy, pity, moral obligation, and the like. Give 
credit for the one to Science, if you will, but allow Religion her 
fair share of credit for the other. 



6 THE HEALING TOUCH. 

The Bible seems to he regarded by many as a book about 
another world, of which we know nothing and can .know no more 
than we are willing to accept on trust, therefore possessing little 
claim upon the time and attention of men who have anything of con- 
sequence to do. The Bible seems, to those who take this view 
of it, to contain a body of mystical opinions, founded upon a 
more or less mythical history, which ecclesiastics ser\^e up to 
religious enthusiasts in the form of undemonstrable theological 
systems. I do not deny that the Bible, apprehended by faith, 
sheds light upon the origin, nature, and destiny of the human 
race ; nor that it contains a theology, the formulation of which has 
enlisted the energies of some of the greatest intellects that the 
world has known. But I hold that the Bible is also a book for 
this world, and that it contains a sociology or theory of human 
relations, equally worthy of systematic development and presen- 
tation. The fundamental principle of the biblical sociology is the 
ideal of Jesus, the universal reign on earth of love, in opposition to 
war, as war is generally understood, namely, to armed conflict be- 
tween men upon the battlefield, and no less to other forms of 
mutually destructive conflict in trade and commerce and in other 
walks of social life. The pessimism of science, in relation to man 
stands out in marked contrast with the optimism of religion on 
the same subject. This is the more remarkable, because Science 
has taught us that man can to a limited extent control and utilize 
the forces of nature, by giving them a different direction, or by 
bringing one force to bear in a way to neutralize the operation of 
another. What Science tells us we can do with nature. Religion 
insists may also be done with human nature. The power which she 
has placed at our disposal for this purpose is love. In the New Tes- 
tament, the original text-book for the Christian religion, we are 
told that evil can be overcome with good. Such experience as we 
have had with the application of this principle confirms the lit- 
eral, I might almost say the scientific, truth of this declaration. 

lyOve as a power in the moral order is the analogue, shall I say of 
the power of gravitation in the physical universe ? The attraction 
of gravitation is the force which regulates the movements of the 
stars, and indirectly determines the times and seasons of all 
physical changes and events. Love is attraction ; not the attrac- 
tion of the senses, passion or lust, but of the mind and heart. It 



THE HEALING TOUCH, 7 

may be from the sympathy of admiration, affection, congeniality ; 
or it may be from the sympathy of pity, compassion, a desire to 
help one in need of help. But the heart of one who loves always 
goes out toward the object of affection. The other element in 
love is exchange of service or benefits, which may be compared 
to the conversion of one form of motion into another, as when 
heat is transformed into light, or light into sound. lyove is never 
wasted. The doctrine of the conservation of physical energy is 
susceptible of spiritual translation, and it may be applied to 
ethical relations. Indeed, I think that the man or woman who 
does not apprehend the true place of affection in human society, 
its untried capabilities, as well as its tested efl&ciency, is as far 
from having arrived at the truth in ethics as would be an astron- 
omer from having grasped the central principle of physics, who 
should reject the Copernican and cling to the exploded Ptolemaic 
theory of the solar system. 

It is not easy to express sentiment in words. The natural 
language of sentiment is poetry. It eludes scientific expression. 
Yet the power of love as a remedial agent is capable of experi- 
mental proof. We know nothing in a scientific sense of origins, 
the origin of life, the origin of sex ; nor even whether matter is 
created or eternal. The nebular hypothesis and the Darwinian 
hypothesis are both speculations, useful as an aid to thought, but 
not conclusive. Ignorant of the origin of matter, we are equally 
ignorant of the origin and nature of energy. We conceive of 
sound, heat, light, and electricity as modes of motion ; but the 
belief to which some scientists lean, that human thought and 
sensibility are also modes of motion, appears to be open to the 
serious objection, that this theory fails to account for all the facts 
in the case. What is love ? Where is its seat ? ' ' God is love. ' ' 
In those three words you will find deeper meaning than in all the 
writings of the psycho-physiologists. Love has its seat in the 
bosom of him who is the Father of light and life and love, the 
Father of spirits, the Father of us all. Like the other attributes 
of Deity, it is infinite, unchangeable, everlasting. The same 
power which prevents the physical universe from falling together 
or from dissipating itself in space, the power which organized 
it, sustains it, keeps it in perpetual motion, guides it, governs it, 
is the fountain and source of love, which flows from the throne of 



8 THE HEALING TOUCH. 

God through all the channels of human affection in its varied 
forms. In the person of Christ the infinite love of God was 
made manifest to the world. It was love which brought him to 
our earth, love which drew him to the poor leper at the foot of 
the mountain, love which impelled him to put forth his hand and 
touch him, love which passed in that touch, as an electric spark 
passes, when an electrical contact is effected ; and the miracle of 
healing wrought in the leper's body was a miracle of love — more 
wonderful, but no less real, no less natural, no less in conformity 
with natural law, than when a girl puts her finger upon the end 
of a lever and cables a message across the sea. 

When such a message is sent, what happens? What are the 
conditions which must be fulfilled? First, there must be power, 
a reser\^oir of power, from which to supply the necess' ;y electric 
current. This power is not in the apparatus, nor in the operator, 
but in the battery. Then there must be an operator to connect 
the apparatus with the source of energy. Finally, there must be 
contact of two electric points, to complete the circuit, without 
which the power is inert and the operator useless. 

What Jesus did to the leper happens in every instance in which 
spiritual healing occurs through human agency. He said to his 
disciples ' ' Greater things than these shall ye do. * ' The healing 
power is not in us, but in God. Nevertheless, God works through 
men. The man who lays hold of God with one hand, and of his 
fellow-men with the other, exerts a power for good incommensu- 
rate with his individual insignificance in the economy of nature. 
But he accomplishes nothing, unless he touches in some way the 
individual whom he influences. I^ove is the power, man the 
instrument, and contact the condition or m^ethod; the combina- 
tion of these three accomplishes the result. The hand put forth 
to bless and to save must be met by the hand outstretched to 
receive the blessing. Thus it is written of the woman with an 
issue of blood, that she touched the hem of the Saviour's gar- 
ment, whereupon he immediately turned himself about and said, 
*' Who touched me? for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." 

lyCt me illustrate this principle by the experience of workers in 
different lines of benevolent effort. 

Degeneracy, in the great majority of instances, assumes one 
of three leading forms, namely, insanity, crime, or pauperism. 



THE HEALING TOUCH, 9 

Take first the case of the insane, including under this general 
title all forms of nervous disease or defect and of mental aliena- 
tion or imbecility. Insanity is a physical disease. As such it 
demands medical treatment. You may say that there is no 
sentiment in rest and exercise and nutrition, nor in tonics, 
hypnotics, and all the other drugs listed in the pharmacopoeia. 
Why, no. But it is love which prompts their administration to 
the sufferer. Had the physician or the patient's friends no 
sympathy for his agony, they would abandon him to his 
wretched fate. It is the common fellow-feeling for suffering 
humanity which created our magnificent public hospitals and 
asylums for the insane and the epileptic, our institutions for the 
care of the idiotic and feeble minded, and which insures cheerful 
payment of the taxes imposed to meet this enormous expense. 
They are the work of God, the God of love, who works by love, 
and who has made man in his own image, communicating to our 
humanity something of his own divinity. Let us go a step 
farther. Grant that physical treatment is addressed to the body, 
in the hope that it may react upon the disordered mind, as it 
does. Is it not equally true that the wise and successful alienist 
seeks to influence the mind of his patient, and that moral treat- 
ment, skillfully applied, reacts upon the diseased body? There 
are cases of insanit}^ in which it is not possible to reach the 
mind of the patient, because of the character and extent of the 
disorganization or functional disturbance of the brain, and physi- 
cal treatment is the first necessity. There are other cases in 
which, if the mental delusions could be successfully combated, 
the wayward impulses controlled or diverted, the patient would 
recover without the aid of medicine. In the great majority of 
cases medical and moral treatment must go hand in hand. 
''These things ought 3^e to do, and not to leave the other un- 
done." It is hard to overestimate the importance of meeting 
the insane mind half way, or more than half way. There is 
probably not a mental delusion, not an incoherent or foolish 
expression, which is not pregnant with meaning, could we but 
interpret it aright ; and the comparative study of the mental man- 
ifestations of insanity may in the distant future enable an expert 
to deduce from them the physical and mental history of the suf- 
ferer, as a comparative anatomist can reconstruct the entire body 



10 THE HEALING TOUCH. 

of an extinct animal from a single bone. But what patience^ 
what devotion, what smypathy, in a word, what love that expec- 
tation implies! It is love which gives insight into the operations 
of the insane mind ; love which never tires, is never discouraged, 
which can not be so disgusted or irritated by anything that the 
lunatic or idiot can say or do as to be turned aside from the 
effort to soothe his pain, awaken his hope, and restore him to 
rational self-consciousness and self-control. For the recovery of 
the lunatic, his soul must be reached and touched. Until this is 
accomplished nothing is done. The touch must be the touch of 
love, the touch of an individual upon an individual, prolonged 
and repeated contact of soul with soul. Indifference, brutality, 
neglect, purely routine treatment, are fatal in their effect upon 
the patient. He must be individualized. He must be made to 
feel that he is personally loved, or he can not be cured. 

Much of what has just been said applies also to the criminal. 
The mental vision of the criminal, like that of the lunatic, is 
distorted. He distinguishes with diflSculty, if at all, between 
right and wrong. He calls good evil and says to evil. Be thou 
my good. He lives in the present moment ; the past fades from 
his mind like a dream, and the future, at least the far-off future, 
is to him as if it did not exist. Experience, therefore, teaches 
him nothing, and his aspirations after a higher life are fitful and 
evanescent as the shadow of a cloud passing over a waving field 
of grain. He is an incapable, and as such merits our pity rather 
than our scorn. He is a pervert. He is a sinner, but also one 
who has been deeply sinned against. Is he irreclaimable? Not 
at all. But he can be redeemed only by love. 

What to do with the criminal, or with the criminally disposed 
boy or girl, is a question which has perplexed statesmen as well 
as philanthropists. Everything has been tried. Mind, I do not 
say tried in vain. The one thing that never yet helped him, and 
never will, is to hang him. Killing a fellow-man, with or with- 
out judge and jury, is the expression of hate, not love, and the 
outgrowth, not of hope, but of despair. Intimidation is little 
better. Retribution, in the sense of justice, is beyond our power, 
and had better be left to God, or, if you like the expression better, 
to the order of nature, whose fundamental law is that action and 



THE HEALING TOUCH. 11 

reaction are equal and contrary. The only thing that remains is 
to reform him. But how? He does not want to be reformed. 
He feels no need of change. He prefers to remain as he is. We 
have tried reforming him, in prison and out of prison. We have 
tried severity, and we have tried kindness. We have given him 
work to do, and we have deprived him of work. We have 
preached at him. We have tried educating him — by the old 
method, the imparting of knowledge to the brain with the aid of 
books, and by the new, reaching the brain through the hand, by 
the use of tools. We have drilled him in the manual of arms. 
We have developed him physically, by light and heavy gymnas- 
tics, by electric and steam baths, by diet, and by massage. We 
have rewarded him. We have punished him. What more can 
we do to him? And still he remains a cake unturned, raw 
dough on one side, burned charcoal on the other ; and the crimi- 
nal, like the poor, is always with us. Of what use are all our 
prison systems? What difference does it make, whether we have 
strictly cellular confinement in the prison, or whether we resort 
to confinement in association? Whether we allow or prohibit 
conversation between prisoners? Whether we grade them or do 
not grade them? Whether their sentence is definite or indefinite, 
determinate or indeterminate ? Whether they are paroled or not 
paroled? None of these things ever reformed or will or can re- 
form a prisoner. The prisoner may not be a criminal, and ma^^ 
not need reforming. A prison system may be so bad in itself, or 
so badly administered, as to make criminals out of men who are 
not criminals. If so, it is because of its stupidity and brutality. 
Unquestionably, one system is better than another, because more 
in harmony with the divinely implanted laws of human nature, 
and therefore it yields better results. But the conclusion at 
which I have arrived, after a life spent in observing the operation 
and effect of all conceivable prison systems, is that in all of them, 
the best and worst alike, the men who are saved are saved by love, 
and by nothing else. The one thing essential to their salvation is 
the healing touch. Love is not weakness, it is power. Some of 
its highest manifestations assume the outward form of severity, 
as the surgeon gives pain when he uses the knife. He must give 
pain. He hurts, to heal. The pain is inevitable, but it is love 



12 THE HEALING TOUCH. 

which inflicts it. If inflicted for any other reason, it does harm.'' 
The prisoner must know and feel that love is the motive of the 
discipline to which he is subjected, love which binds up the 
wound that love has made. Some one in the prison — the warden, 
the physician, the chaplain, or the guard, must find the way to 
make him believe that the ofiicial touch is the divine human 
touch, the same which Jesus bestowed upon the leper. To that 
he will respond, when he will respond to nothing else. 

I have formulated for my personal use a simple rule for judg- 
ing ofiicials in charge of criminals and of the insane, by which to 
grade them from the highest to the lowest in the scale of capacity 
and efl&ciency. If I can estimate aright the degree of fear felt by 
them of the men and women under them, I know where to 
place them. There are many ways of determining this. It is 
apparent in the architectural construction of an institution for 
the insane, in its regulations, in the look and manner of the 
patients, in the extent to which mechanical restraints are em- 
ployed in it, in the number of barred windows and locked doors, 
in the degree of freedom allowed in the house and in the grounds. 
In a prison, it is shown in the use of striped clothes and the lock- 
step, in the number and character of the punishments, in the 
privileges granted, in the cheerful or sullen demeanor of the 
men, in the percentage of insanity and suicide. The point of 
this observation is that fear and love are opposites, and that ' 'per- 
fect love casteth out fear. ' ' Where fear is in the heart of the 
officer in charge, love is not, and where love is absent, there is no 
healing touch, therefore few recoveries from insanity or crime, 
whatever may be said to the contrary in the statistical tables pub- 
lished in an annual report.' 

The National Conference of Charities was originally to a much 
greater extent than now an official body. With the advent of a 
proportionally larger number of representatives of private chari- 
ties, especially of younger men and women representing the work 
of the associated charities, questions pertaining to methods of 
relief and prevention of pauperism have naturally occupied more 
of our time and attention. Nowhere is the personal touch more 
needed than in the care of the poor. This conviction led to the 
movement which has received the name of * 'organized charity,'' 



THE HEALING TOUCH, 13 

and it is the mainspring of its vitality. Its originators were ani- 
mated by two leading thoughts: First, that almsgiving by proxy, 
while it may be an effective means of alleviating the physical dis- 
tress due to extreme poverty, has proved almost a complete fail- 
ure as a means of lifting the poor man out of his poverty; and, 
second, that no system of almsgiving, individual or organized, can 
accomplish this result without the intervention of the so-called 
''friendly visitor/' These principles were elaborated into a sys- 
tem known as ''the new charity,'' which is a misnomer, since 
they are not new. The movement had two distinct aims, one 
positive, the other negative. It sought to render imposture on 
the part of professional beggars more difl&cult, by registration 
of the relief granted by all charitable organizations in a given 
community; and for this purpose it devised a scheme of central 
records, somewhat complicated, perhaps, but useful, where a real 
demand for it exists, and where it can be carried into practical 
effect. On the other hand, it sought to abolish the middleman 
in charity, and to bring the giver and the recipient of relief into 
personal relation with each other. These were excellent aims. 
They have been only partially realized. Correct theories are not 
always susceptible of practical application. One of the serious 
difficulties in the way of their realization is the impossibility in 
many places, particularly if of small size, with few poor persons 
having a claim to relief, of maintaining an organization which 
does not combine almsgiving with its other functions. The con- 
sequence has been that many so-called charity organization soci- 
eties have become, or tend to become, nothing more than old- 
fashioned relief associations; for we must not forget that the 
provident associations organized years ago started out with sub- 
stantially the same ideals now upheld by the associated charities. 
The same causes which diverted them from their theoretical aims 
are likely to produce similar results in the case of the new associ- 
ations. The only safeguard against this outcome of the move- 
ment is the acceptance of the doctrine which I proclaim this day, 
and a strict adherence to it as the rule of the order; namely, that 
not the alleviation of poverty but its cure is the ideal of organ- 
ized charity, and that this can not be made actual, even to a lim- 
ited extent, without the aid of the friendly visitor. 



14 THE HEALING TOUCH. 

The friendly visitor, whether a member of an organization,- 
benevolent or ecclesiastic, or a volunteer working on his or her 
own account, is the channel through which the power of love in 
the heart of God for all his children, most of all for his suffering 
children, is exerted for the uplifting of the poor. Without the 
touch of the friendly visitor the most that can be done for a 
man or woman in danger of sinking to the level of a chronic 
pauper is to palliate his suffering for the moment. The relief 
given him is more likely to be material than spiritual, and at best 
it is but temporary. Material aid does not reach the sore spot. 
Pauperism is allied to insanity on one side and to crime on the 
other. Insanit}^ is a mental, but crime a spiritual, malady. The 
most brilliant sceptic that America has produced once expressed 
the wish that God had made health as contagious as disease. 
Mental and spiritual health are contagious, but not without con- 
tact of the healthy with the unhealthy mind. Mental contact is 
not sufficient. The touch must be that of the heart, the soul. A 
friendly visitor who becomes such from any other motive than love 
is disqualified for the work he has to do. The more difficult the 
case in hand, the greater must be the output of the power of love, 
wearing a way to the heart of the tired, discouraged imbecile 
whose cure he has undertaken ; love immeasurable, unwearied, ever 
fresh, equal to every demand upon it. When the supply is in peril 
of exhaustion, let the visitor call upon God for a new supply. 

I need not, I think, carry the illustration of the healing touch 
into other departments of charitable work : into child saving, for 
instance. lyove in the family would render half the work in that 
direction needless. It is the unloved child, usually, who goes 
astray ; or else the child who is the object of a mistaken, coun- 
terfeit affection, assuming the form of indulgence unmodified by 
proper parental restraint. 

To avoid misconception, let me add that love needs always to be 
supplemented by knowledge. The combination of knowledge 
with love, or of the conclusions of the reason with the intuitions 
of the heart, constitutes wisdom — a much higher and nobler attri- 
bute than knowledge alone. Tennyson, speaking of the evolution 
of civilization, has said that 

Knowledge comevS but wisdom lingers. 



THE HEALING TOUCH, 15 

This is because, as material precedes intellectual growth, so does 
the victory over ignorance precede that over brutality. Igno- 
rance and brutality are sisters. They encourage each other in mis- 
chief. Both are enem'es to progress, especially to that slow 
uplifting of humanity to which philanthropists and humanitarians 
devote their energies. One-half our failure is due to want of 
love, the other to lack of information, or inability to perceive the 
truth in its proper proportions and relations. The man who 
assumes to criticise the ordinary processes of nature or of human 
nature, and to interfere with them, in order to secure more satis- 
factory results, can not know too much, nor possibly enough. 
God never let loose upon the planet a more dangerous man than 
the reformer. If he knew more, he would probably abandon his 
chosen vocation. But the mistakes of reformers would be fewer, 
if they were more deeply imbued with the natural human instincts 
— sympathy, toleration, ability to put oneself in the place of 
another ; if they were less given to denunciation of wrong and 
more to helping the wrongdoer ; if the}^ were more loving-hearted, 
and less self-confident and self-righteous. 

Another misconception, which must be guarded against, is that 
of supposing that love is tolerant of unrighteousness. ' ' Charity 
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. '^ ''Mercy 
and truth," said the Psalmist — mercy and truth or love and 
righteousness, ' ' have kissed each other. ' ' lyove is the power 
which makes for righteousness, because ' ' Love worketh no ill to 
his neighbor ; therefore love is the f tdfilling of the law. ' ' The 
law of love is the golden rule : ' ' As ye would that men should 
do to you do ye even so to them." The universal observance of 
this rule would usher in the golden age, in which the lost Eden 
shall be regained. 

Love, thus understood, is the solution of every social problem, 
the antidote for every social ill. Perfect and universal love would 
put an end to war, to slavery, to intemperance, to licentiousness, 
to divorce, to pauperism, and to crime. If men were in right 
relations with each other and with God, there would be no Indian 
or Chinese or negro question, no conflict between capital and 
labor, no antagonism between the employer and the employed, no 
scorn of the poor by the rich, no envy of the rich by the poor. 



16 THE HEALING TOUCH. 

no corruption in politics, no bitter and unreasoning partisanship, 
no race prejudice, no class distinctions, no caste. The theolog- 
ical controversies that disgrace Christendom would come to an 
end, and the unity of the church would be secured by the recog- 
nition of the unity of the race, the universal brotherhood of man. 
Why do men fear love and dread its reign? Why do they put a 
check upon their own loving impulses? Why do they discourage 
the manifestation of love in others and refuse to accept the min- 
istrations and sacrifices in which love rejoices? He that is of the 
truth hears the voice of love; but men love darkness rather than 
light, because their deeds are evil. lyOve is light. lyOve is life. 
He that loves is born again into a new life, the life of God upon 
earth, everlasting life, life beyond the tomb. 

I marvel, therefore, at the undue importance which we attach, 
in our discussions, to methods of charitable work. Not that they 
are unimportant. Not that they do not demand discussion. 
Not that it makes no difference whether we adopt and pursue 
inferior or vicious methods in preference to better methods, more 
fruitful of good results. We need to exchange experiences and 
to compare opinions. There are practical and unpractical meth- 
ods, methods scientific and unscientific, in every undertaking, 
religious or secular ; in medicine, in education, in philanthropy, 
and in government. But infinitely more important is the ques- 
tion of the spirit in which they are followed, whether our 
motives are pure, whether our eye is single, whether we seek, in 
what we do, self-gratification and the applause of men, or 
whether we do all in the name of the Master, unselfishly, hoping 
to be blessed in blessing others. Build up your institutions or 
tear them down, organize them on this plan or on that, employ 
whatever agencies for good may seem to you best, find your 
point of attack, fight the forces of evil where and how you will; 
but remember that healing comes by the touch, that men are 
saved not in masses, but one by one, and that every one saved 
must be saved by an individual, whose own heart is filled with 
love, and who is able to communicate to another the grace which 
he himself has received. 

When next we assemble as a conference the twentieth century 
will have begun. We have seen the glory of the passing century. 



THE HEALING TOUCH, 17 

Greater yet will be the glory of the century to come, because it is 
destined to be a century of moral victories more resplendent 
than the material and intellectual triumphs of the last hundred 
years. The twilight of this hour gives promise of the coming 
day. This has been the century of science, but that will be the 
century of love. The religious scepticism of science, at present 
in the thralls of a materialistic philosophy and unable to see spir- 
itual truth with the spiritual eye, will give way before the recog- 
nition of the spiritual element in human nature. When to the 
knowledge of nature shall be added a just conception of the 
boundless possibilities of growth of the human soul, w^hen the 
science of social organization and evolution shall become the sub- 
ject of serious study and as well understood as the natural 
sciences, the veil will drop that now hides God from the vision of 
the agnostic, and Science will become the handmaid of Religion. 

So much for Science, but what of Religion? I seem to see 
through the mist which obscures the dawn the dim outlines of a 
new church and a new creed ; the old church and the old creed 
purified and glorified, standing forth in the light of the new 
science, and lighted from within by a deeper consciousness of the 
love of God for man and a new sense of the obligations of men to 
each other as brethren in the life that now is. 

And as I gaze, I hear a voice which cries, '' The holy city, the 
new Jerusalem, is come down from God out of heaven.'' The 
holy city ! Bewildering thought ! But why not ? If Religion 
can bring heaven down to earth, and Science, working with 
Religion, not against her, can raise earth to heaven, is the purifi- 
cation of government, even of municipal government, through 
the power of love, a thing impossible ? The twentieth century 
may not witness this marvelous transformation, but it will 
surely come. 

And you, who feel the woes of mankind, who know that the 
world needs regeneration and redemption, who are working with 
God to bring it about, who want it here and now, who love, and 
w^ho have consecrated your lives to love's propaganda ; you are 
the heralds of the morning, the forerunners of the modern Messiah, 
the advance guard of the victorious Kingdom of God. 



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